Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina has been directly accused in Guatemalan court of ordering executions during Guatemala’s decades-long campaign against Maya indigenous people, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The accusation came during the ongoing trial of former U.S.-backed dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. A former military mechanic named Hugo Reyes told the court that President Pérez, then serving as an army major and using the name Tito Arias, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage a Maya Ixil area in the 1980s. Reyes told the court: “The soldiers, on orders from [Otto Pérez Molina] … coordinated the burning and looting, in order to later execute people.” President Pérez has denied the allegations and says he only acted to help civilians.